Wireshark · Ethereal-users: Re: [Ethereal-users] Automation of Ethereal in Command-line Mode

[Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>]

tmadigan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> Using Ethereal in command-line mode, can it be configured to
> automatically produce the formatted report, currently produced by the
> 'save as' or 'Export' functions in the GUI mode?

"Save as" doesn't produce formatted reports (I don't remember whether it 
ever did, but it doesn't do so now) - it saves in various binary capture 
file formats.

If you want to do that on the command line, with no user interaction, 
use Tethereal - "-w" causes it to write a binary capture file, and "-F" 
can be used to override the default of libpcap format, if you have a 
reason to do that.

"Export" writes various output formats:

	XML - you can use Tethereal for that, with "-T pdml" or "-T psml";

	Plain text - I'm not sure you can do *all* formats of that with 
Tethereal, but its default behavior is to produce a summary listing, 
with "-V" giving a detailed dissection;

	Postscript - see "Plain text", with "-T ps";

	comma-separated values - I don't know whether Tethereal does that, but, 
if it doesn't, that should be added, e.g. with "-T csv".

There's no mechanism to get Ethereal to produce any of the "Export" 
reports automatically, and that's really Tethereal's job - if it can't 
do all those jobs, it should be changed to do so.